How to Describe Volumes and Instances

After creating Amazon EBS volumes and attaching them to instances, you should verify they are available.

AWS Management Console

To view information about an Amazon EBS volume

Log in to the AWS Management Console and click the Amazon EC2 tab.
Click Volumes in the Navigation pane.

The console displays a list of current volumes and the instances to which they are attached.
To view more information about a volume, select it.

Information about the volume appears in the lower pane.

Command Line Tools

To describe volumes, which lists information about all volumes that you own

Enter the following command.

              PROMPT> 
              
                 
              
              ec2-describe-volumes

Amazon EBS returns the following information.

VOLUME vol-4d826724 us-east-1a 800 in-use 2008-02-14T00:00:00+0000
  ATTACHMENT vol-4d826724 i-6058a509 /dev/sdh attached 2008-02-14T00:00:17+0000
  VOLUME vol-50957039 13 us-east-1a available 2008-02-091T00:00:00+0000
  VOLUME vol-6682670f 1 us-east-1a in-use 2008-02-11T12:00:00+0000
  ATTACHMENT vol-6682670f i-69a54000 /dev/sdh attached 2008-02-11T13:56:00+0000

This information includes the volume ID, capacity, status (in-use or available) and creation time of each volume. If the volume is attached, an attachment line shows the volume ID, the instance ID to which the volume is attached, the device name exposed to the instance, its status (attaching, attached, detaching, detached), and when it attached.

To describe instances, which lists volumes that are attached to running instances

Enter the following command.

              PROMPT> 
              
                 
              
              ec2-describe-instances

Amazon EBS returns the following information.

RESERVATION  r-e112fc88	416161254515  default
  INSTANCE  i-3b887c52  ami-3fd13456  ec2-67-202-27-216.compute-1.amazonaws.com  domU-12-31-38-00-35-94.compute-1.internal
  running	gsg-keypair  0  m1.small  2007-11-26T13:20:35+0000  windows  vol-4d826724
  RESERVATION  r-e612fc8f	416161254515  default
  INSTANCE  i-21b63c22  ami-3fd13456  ec2-67-202-18-227.compute-1.amazonaws.com	domU-12-31-38-00-39-28.compute-1.internal
  running	gsg-keypair  0  m1.small  2007-11-26T13:21:51+0000  windows  vol-6682670f